Today, I listened to
Mark Aufflick’s interview where
he talks eloquently about starting your own business. I love the
perspective he had on his first business and how shutting it down gave
him the necessary (though painful) experience to make his current
business work. He also talked about the importance of computing
history especially given the availability of interesting subjects. He
ended with great advice on the importance of professionalism.
Paraphrased: “Make sure your team is the most professional side of any
relationship.”

I know Mark and
Mark from the
OpenACS glory days and it’s great to hear how
well they’re doing. Computing history was a prominent part of both
talks. I think this is important. Old ideas are always new again. Some
of the ideas that these pioneers had were only limited by the
horsepower we had to work with at the time. Now thanks to Moore’s law,
those limitations are gone, so we should re-investigate those ideas.
Or maybe we’re all just getting old and like to talk about the
good-old-days. :-) It’s nice to see that they both mentioned the
OpenACS period of their programming lives as important. It certainly
was for me. It was also great to hear Mark Aufflick’s voice for the
first time, even though I feel like he’s been a friend for many years.